An All In One Nation

Hey, I know this is a music blog, but working in the digital department I figured I would talk a bit about technology.

“All in one, Nation.” We are a nation obsessed with having everything in one place--all of which is supposed to make life more productive and easier to manage. But I say it’s all a disguise. Amazon is now adding web hosting services to it’s line up of products to compete with Google and Microsoft.

Amazon goes on to explain how they will undercut the pricing on hosting and services for internet-based companies. This is very typical of Amazon, saying they are competing with everyone by cutting prices. Their most recent achievement was going for the Itunes market by offering a better quality download for ten cents cheaper. Now, they are going for the business market. My problem isn’t so much with Amazon, but they prove that our nation is obsessed with getting all of their needs fulfilled in one spot.

In the beginning, this always seems like a good idea--prices go down, quality goes up. It’s great for consumers. But then, eventually, the competitors consolidate, prices go up, and quality goes down. It’s happening with cell phones, it’s happened with cars, it’s going on every where. And what was all in one place actually hurt us more. Think of Wal-Mart. Everything you could possible need in one location. Food, clothes, doctors, dentists, cars, plants, home improvement everything except a church service. So what ended up happening is they now have suppliers backed in a corner. Wal-Mart has controlled their profits because they have to have low prices. Now manufacturers have to cut corners so they can keep up with the low prices. Not to mention the loss of community and local business. So did this make things easier? Not really. The economy is down, jobs are lost and people need cheep prices because they are in poverty now.
Another example is email.

Let’s examine the email chain. Where I work I have three emails, plus the two for my own company, and then of course my two personal emails (because Google is just too cool to pass up). Then they all go to my Microsoft Outlook which shoots them all to my blackberry--for a grand total of seven emails. Having this all go to one spot--my phone--seems cool.

Let’s for one second forget the social distress this creates for always being connected to work and think about how this was supposed to make my life easier. Well, any given day I receive about ten to fifteen junk emails per account, maybe one that is relevant and one that is really important. So that’s 119 emails a day that I have to filter through just in case a clients request got filtered in my junk mail. By the time I get to the really important email that was time sensitive, I’ve lost my window and now have to back track even more. This has not made my life easier at all.

So what can someone do in my position? Well, I have come up with some solutions: tell everyone if it’s really important, send a carrier pigeon, send a letter or give me a call. That way I’m not so stressed about the time I have to spend filtering through junk. As for the seven different emails, that’s an issue of being an entrepreneur. I have different clients with different needs, and I need different emails for them to contact me at. Plus, it’s not fun if my family and friends have to keep losing my email address because I switched jobs again.

So, my next move is to step away from the addiction to email and get back to talking to people like a regular human being. This won’t stop the junk mail; this won’t prevent the need of having many different emails. This will take the stress and dependency off of using email as my main tool of communication. This way my life won’t be all in one spot (like Wal-Mart). Not to mention, if the black berries go out again, I won’t commit suicide.